Onondaga County sheriff's deputies racked up hundreds of hours of overtime, without the sheriff's approval, in October to teach an emergency driving course to recruits.
(John O'Brien | jobrien@syracuse.com)

Four of them put in about 120 hours of overtime apiece - about 40 hours a week - over three weeks to teach an emergency vehicle driving course, according to one of the deputies.

The total cost for all nine deputies' 692 hours of overtime was $30,818.

The deputies' boss, Sheriff Kevin Walsh, said he was stunned to learn how much they'd racked up without his approval.

"When the overtimes got turned in, our personnel people brought it to us," he said. "They said, 'Is this true? Did this really happen?' And that's when we started looking into it."

It's the latest instance of excessive overtime in the sheriff's office, which has drawn criticism from legislators and the county comptroller. This time, some of the overtime went to a candidate for sheriff, Crayg Dykes.

Crayg Dykes

An internal investigation found the deputies did work the hours, so no one was disciplined, Walsh said. But he still had a problem with the way it was handled, without the OK of top administrators.

John Balloni, as the sheriff's chief civil deputy, had responsibility for the training course. But he said he too was unaware of the massive overtime until after the emergency vehicle operators course was over.

"We scheduled the EVOC and we had, quite frankly, no idea the amount of overtime that it was going to entail," said Balloni, who's also running for sheriff this year. The out-of-control OT won't happen again, he said.

"Now all such details need to come in, with overtime listed as part of it, and I personally have to sign off on that, so I'm aware of it," Balloni said.

The overtime showed up in time sheets obtained by The Post-Standard and Syracuse.com under the state's freedom of information law. Syracuse.com, acting on a tip, requested time sheets of only three deputies.

The nine deputies who instructed at the course totaled 692 hours of overtime over three weeks -- an average of 77 hours apiece, according to the sheriff's office.

Richard Flanagan Jr.Gloria Wright | The Post-Standard

The deputy in charge of the course, Sgt. Richard Flanagan Jr., got 165 hours of overtime over a month for preparing and instructing the course in October. Dykes got 122 hours over three weeks, according to the time sheets.

In one six-day stretch, Flanagan for five days started work at 5 a.m.and finished at 9 p.m. -- all 16 hours each day being overtime. On the sixth of those days, he worked from 6:42 a.m. to 8:04 p.m. and got 13.25 hours overtime, according to his time sheets.

"I looked at it and I was very surprised by the fact that we got hit with that kind of overtime," Walsh said.

County legislators were more upset about the lack of oversight.

"If the sheriff did not approve this, that's a bigger problem," said Ryan McMahon, chairman of the Legislature. Until he talked to a reporter last month, McMahon was unaware of the amount of overtime deputies rang up for the driving course.

At a meeting of the Legislature's ways and means committee last month, McMahon grilled the chief custody deputy, Esteban Gonzalez, about the jail running $450,000 over budget in overtime expenses last year.

The road patrol side was much worse in its budget overrun for overtime -- $800,000 for the year, McMahon said. No one from the patrol side was at the hearing.

"My blood pressure's boiling right now," McMahon said after hearing about the overtime for emergency vehicle training. "This isn't my money. This isn't the sheriff's money. This isn't some lieutenant's money. This is the taxpayers' money, and that's egregious overtime."

Dykes said he was only following orders.

"There was a schedule made and we followed the schedule and we provided the training," Dykes said. "If you were to ask me, certainly things could've been scheduled differently in order to save money. But I wasn't in a position to make that decision."

There are a limited number of certified instructors to teach the course, which is required by the state for all police officers, Dykes said.

The driving class schedule was set by Flanagan, Walsh said. Flanagan did not return phone and email requests for an interview.

Flanagan's regular salary in 2013 was $65,275. With more than $39,000 in overtime added, he made $104,713, according to the county comptroller's office. Dykes' regular salary was the same. With $54,000 in overtime, his total salary was $119,550.

Last year's driving class was for sheriff's deputy recruits from Onondaga and Oswego counties, plus one police recruit from the state attorney general's office, Dykes said. The class had to be split in two, so the instructors taught one group in the morning and the other in the afternoon, resulting in 16-hour days, Dykes said.

The course was taught at an airport in Fulton, he said.

In just six days during the course, Flanagan worked 93 hours of overtime - 15.5 hours per day, according to his time sheets.

The driving course used to be taught at the former police academy at OCC, Walsh said. Overtime wasn't a problem for the course then because the instructors were working part-time for OCC, he said.

He blamed himself for not giving specific instructions about not using overtime to teach the class, he said.

"I had given implicit instructions that the quality of the training should be as it's always been," Walsh said. "What I failed to do was give explicit instructions that overtime was not to be used for that."

Since the massive overtime surfaced, Walsh's office has rewritten its training policy. The emergency vehicle driving course will be stretched out over a longer period to eliminate the overtime, he said.

"We've put things in there that should prevent ever having this happen again," Walsh said.
Contact John O'Brien at jobrien@syracuse.com or 315-470-2187.